Electrical connectors consisting of two halves mounted on nearly parallel printed circuit boards to be connected together, are known in the art. Following the general trend toward the reduction of electrical devices in size, such connectors intended for the mounting on printed circuit boards are also becoming smaller resulting in the necessity to increase strength of the mechanical connection of such connectors to boards. For this purpose, the board mounted connectors are secured to the boards by solder mounts set in side walls of the housing, for example, and surface mounted to the board surface such as in connectors according to Japanese Patent Disclosure Hei 7 (1995)-240246. Another method of securing the solder mounts to the connector consists in the embedding of grounding contacts in side walls of the housing such as in connectors according to Japanese Patent Disclosure Hei 7 (1995)-94241.
In order to enhance the freedom of designers of such small-size connectors intended for the mounting on board surface, it is desirable to provide an electrical connection between the solder mount of the plug connector and that of the receptacle connector for the purposes of grounding. That is, it is desirable to provide a possibility to ground connectors through solder mounts of either plug or receptacle connectors.
It is known from U.S. Pat. No. 5,183,405 for a matable connector pair to have housings with board mounts having contact sections disposed in cavities for grounding continuity, where one contact of a mating pair has a tab and the other has a spring arm contact section within its cavity to mate with the tab, with the mating tab adjacent a housing sidewall and the spring arm deflectable within its housing by the mating tab.
The purpose of this invention is to offer a board surface mounted connector allowing for the implementation of grounding either from the plug connector side or from the receptacle connector side by providing electrical connection between both solder mounts without compromising the small size of the connector.